shopify re(unite) recap.

10 years in 8 weeks.

Wow.

Commerce is rapidly accelerating, and Shopify is leading the way.

In the past two months online sales have increased at a rate matching the previous decade.  Thats right, 10 years of growth, all in the past two months.

Shopify has been hard at work during this time– ensuring that they build the products that merchants need the most, and quickly.

In this episode we unpack Shopify Reunite, an event that highlights all of the most recent Shopify releases and explore what that means to you, the merchant.

 

sponsors.

Rewind is the easiest way to backup your Shopify store and undo unwanted changes. Get peace of mind knowing that your most important store data is automatically backed up by Shopify’s top-rated backup app.

show notes.

[01:46] Introductions

[03:14] Shopify Balance

[04:44] Shopify Capital

[05:54] Shop Pay Installments

[08:16] Updates to Shopify gift cards

[11:43] Shopify POS

[14:24] Tipping at checkout

[16:06] Native subscription support

[17:33] Curbside pickup, local delivery

[19:48] Local domains

[21:32] Custom pricing for multicurrency merchants

[26:02] New online store design experience

[24:31] Shopify Express Theme

[30:46] Improvements to product creation, product states

[34:14] New/updated sales channels: Google Shopping, Facebook Shops

[38:26] Shop app

[41:15] Shopify Email

[42:53] Shopify Ping

[45:06] Shopify Compass

[47:12] Improved orders page, returns workflow

[48:39] Shopify Fulfillment Network

[50:41] Purchase orders

[52:38] Performance improvements, Performance Dashboard

[58:21] Shopify store shoutouts: Ugly Drinks, Micro Puzzles

 

transcript.

Kelly (00:02): Welcome to the first episode of Commerce Tea. We're really excited to bring you a new episode every Tuesday morning, where we'll be discussing how to succeed on Shopify. To kick things off, we're recapping the big announcements from Shopify Reunite, the first ever live stream for Shopify merchants, which happened on May 20th. We have a ton of announcements to discuss, and we'll be digging into detail on how these are going to impact your business. Let's get started.

Rhian (00:30): Welcome to Commerce Tea, a podcast to help you succeed on Shopify. I'm Rhian.

Kelly (00:35): And I'm Kelly. Grab a mug and join us as we talk about all things commerce.

Rhian (00:50): Hey Kelly, have you ever been working on a Shopify store and then, bam, something happens and you lose what you're working on?

Kelly (00:58): I'd love to say no, but the reality is accidents do happen, especially when you have multiple people working on a store. Apps that automatically add code to your theme may cause an issue or a team member may delete product images by mistake.

Rhian (01:11): Doesn't Shopify back your store up automatically?

Kelly (01:13): It's a common misconception, but no, and that's where the Shopify App Rewind comes in.

Rhian (01:18): What's that?

Kelly (01:19): Rewind is like having your very own magic undo button. It helps you recover from human error or misbehaving apps. It's trusted by over 25,000 businesses from side hustles to some of the biggest online retailers, like Gym Shark or Movement watches.

Rhian (01:32): That sounds awesome. Where can I learn more?

Kelly (01:34): Head to rewind.io/commercetea to learn more about rewind backups. You'll get your first month free when signing up on that page. Again, that's rewind.io/commercetea. Rhian?

Rhian (01:46): Yes.

Kelly (01:47): How are you today?

Rhian (01:49): I'm doing awesome. How are you?

Kelly (01:50): I am doing great. Since this is our first episode, let's do quick introductions. So who are you?

Rhian (01:57): My name is Rhian Beutler and I am the COO and Co-founder of venntov, a Shopify app company. Now the real question is, Kelly, who are you?

Kelly (02:05): That is a very good question. I'm still figuring that one out. From what I know, my name is Kelly Vaughn. I am the CEO and Founder of The Taproom, a Shopify plus agency based out of Atlanta.

Rhian (02:17): Awesome. Well, now everybody else knows us too.

Kelly (02:20): And now I know who you are, it's great.

Rhian (02:22): Perfect.

Kelly (02:23): Cool. So let's just jump right into announcements. There are so many announcements. So Reunite, it was the first event of its kind, and it was a live stream for an hour and a half and it was just announcement after announcement after announcement. So we're going to do our best to recap all of these things in how they will impact your business and how you can use the features, or when you'll be able to use these new features, and hopefully you'll be as excited as we are for all these new things to be released,

Rhian (02:55): Because we are really, really excited about what is being released and what already has been released and announced at Reunite.

Kelly (03:03): Absolutely. So I think let's start from where the big release happened, which was the last two minutes. They dropped this bomb and they were like, "Okay, we're done."

Rhian (03:14): Right.

Kelly (03:14): So let's start there. So the really big announcement of reunite was Shopify Balance.

Rhian (03:23): Yes.

Kelly (03:25): Tell me about it. What is it?

Rhian (03:27): And I do have to say I am a super fan of this announcement because I used to be a small business banker working with clients who made between $0 and $20 million in annual revenue. So I was listening to this and my old business banker self was celebrating. So Shopify Balance is a one stop shop within the Shopify admin where merchants get to see what's going on. They get to bank. They get to pay their bills. They get to track their expenses. They get a Shopify debit card, which is absolutely epic because it's branded for their store, and then they get rewards for spending it, which doesn't happen often on a debit card. That's like a credit card thing. So I'm really, really excited about this.

Kelly (04:10): I think it's awesome. And also, I would start a business just to get one of those debit cards.

Rhian (04:15): Do they not look so awesome?

Kelly (04:18): They're super cool.

Rhian (04:20): We should probably get one.

Kelly (04:21): Okay. Actually Commerce Tea is built on Shopify so theoretically maybe we can get our own little Commerce Tea cards.

Rhian (04:32): Oh.

Kelly (04:33): We'll talk about this.

Rhian (04:34): Yeah, let's take that offline. That's a great idea.

Kelly (04:38): So another big announcement, like I said, we're going to be moving pretty quickly through these.

Rhian (04:43): Because there are many.

Kelly (04:44): Exactly. But along the same lines is Shopify Capital. So one of the things that they announced when talking about Shopify Balance is that you're going to be able to request this credit through Shopify Capital directly within your Shopify Balance account, which I think is super cool.

Rhian (05:02): Oh, I love this. Going through a traditional bank getting a business line of credit is actually quite difficult, and you have to provide all of this information and Shopify Capital makes it really easy because they get to see how you're making that money and they can tell when to lend. Now, I don't know the secret sauce behind their lending, but that's my assumption. And so far they've done over a billion dollars in lending and I personally know merchants who have taken this and they have told me this has been a lifeline for their company. So they do loans, Shopify Capital does loans from anywhere from $200 to a million dollars, which is a huge difference in lending capacity.

Kelly (05:39): For sure. And it's based on your revenue as well so you can't expect if you're doing $60,000 a year, you're not going to be offered a billion dollars. So just to be clear about that.

Rhian (05:50): Right, absolutely. I kind of view it as a cashflow measure.

Kelly (05:54): Absolutely. So, in the show notes, we're going to providing links to Shopify Balance and Shopify Capital so you can learn more about that. The next really big thing is Shop Pay Installments. So this is super cool to me. If you've ever used any of the installment providers, such as Klarna or Afterpay, Sezzle, some of them offer a service that breaks your payment into four parts, so you make for the customers will be able to split their order into four installments. You receive all the money upfront I believe for those.

Rhian (06:27): Yes, I believe so. I believe so.

Kelly (06:30): I think so.

Rhian (06:30): Sometime we're going to make some conjecture, just because. When there's typically product announcements, if you are a merchant or a store owner, and we use those terms interchangeably, we on the tech side of things are used to announcements coming and then us kind of pontificating upon them and then them releasing. So if we make a conjecture or have an opinion that turns out to be incorrect, I do so apologize.

Kelly (06:56): But if we make a guess and it actually was correct, good job us.

Rhian (07:00): Yeah. We're mostly right.

Kelly (07:02): Obviously. But yeah. So Shop Pay Installments, so this is going to be built directly into the checkout for customers, anybody who's using Shop Pay, which was Shopify Pay before this. And customers, again, will be able to split their purchase into four equal installments. 0% interest, which is awesome.

Rhian (07:22): Love that.

Kelly (07:22): And you'll receive the full purchase amount upfront, so just minus the fee for splitting the Shop Pay Installments. And Shopify is working with a partner to actually collect the payments for the customer. So you won't have to do anything more. That's it.

Rhian (07:36): It's going to be really game changing for so many merchants who have that higher price point where conversion becomes more difficult, especially on mobile, and all of a sudden, bam, it splits the payments up into four, easy peasy. Conversion rates are going to skyrocket. That's my prediction related to this.

Kelly (07:53): Absolutely. If you are selling products that generally have a higher average order value, higher price point, this is something you should absolutely be looking at using. It is coming soon, it's not available to release yet, but there is a link to join the wait wait list, which we will include in the show notes. And, by the way, our show notes are going to be available on our website at commercetea.com.

Rhian (08:16): Perfect. So, Kelly, I know there was an announcement related to gift cards and you talk about gift cards a lot. So I want to throw this over to you.

Kelly (08:25): Yeah. I do talk about gift cards a lot. So, at the beginning of the pandemic, Shopify announced that gift cards are going to be free for all plans. They basically said the same thing during Reunite, that they're temporarily free for all plans. Usually, you have to be on the $79 a month plan called Shopify or higher in order to offer gift cards. So if you're paying on Shopify Basic, which is the $29 a month plan, you can use gift cards. I do want to preface this with, if you do offer gift cards, there are certain things with your accounting that you're going to have to be aware of based on how gift cards are not actual revenue until the gift card is spent.

Rhian (09:08): Okay, so I don't know anything about this.

Kelly (09:10): Yeah. So basically it's like digital currency. It's a gift card.

Rhian (09:14): Okay.

Kelly (09:15): And in the eyes of the overlords of taxes, they're not actually seen as real income for your business yet, until the gift card has been redeemed in use for another order on your store. However, you still have to pay taxes on outstanding gift cards that have not been used yet. It's super complicated. I am not a CPA, which means you should talk to your CPA about offering gift cards before you sign on to use gift cards.

Rhian (09:46): Oh, that's great advice, before you do something financial for your business, talk to your CPA or your tax professional or your legal team and or all three, because neither Kelly or I are credentialed to do either of those things.

Kelly (09:58): We are not. We're just on a podcast. But there are a couple of things that I'd like to see in the gift cards down the road, and this is kind of where I'm speculating. Two main caveats to using gift cards on Shop Pay Installments. First of all, you can't have custom gift card amounts. You have to set them basically like their variance options.

Rhian (10:19): Hm.

Kelly (10:19): So you set the fixed dollar amounts that customers can purchase the gift cards for. Second, you can't send a gift card to somebody else, which is kind of weird to me. Basically, you will check out as you normally do. You receive the email with the gift card code and everything, and then you can print it out or save it as a PDF to send to somebody else, but you can not send that gift card to another person directly through Shopify right now. There is an app, however, called rise.ai that I like that does extend this functionality so you can send a gift card to somebody else.

Rhian (10:56): Thank you for touching on that because I think, hey, Shopify, if you're listening, we would really like to see the ability to send gift cards to somebody else.

Kelly (11:05): Yes, we would.

Rhian (11:06): Actually, Kelly and I combined bought a gift card the other day for one of our friends and it was a little bit more labor intensive than perhaps it should be. So love the feature.

Kelly (11:18): You have some opinions about the process.

Rhian (11:22): I'm a power user of Shopify stores and apparently I'd never bought a gift card on a Shopify store before, so I was actually surprised by the process. But I also will say, if you set variants, make sure you don't set one at 101 at 250 because I would really like an option that isn't $250 after $100. So that would be kind of a pro tip in there that I learned.

Kelly (11:43): For sure. So let's jump down to Shopify Point of Sale. Now, you have an app ...

Rhian (11:48): I do.

Kelly (11:49): ... that extends to Shopify Point of Sale. So let's talk about what they did with Point of Sale.

Rhian (11:55): Yeah.

Kelly (11:55): Let's see how many times I can say, "Point of Sale" in the course of 30 seconds.

Rhian (11:58): I've been really excited about Point of Sale for a long time, which is why we built an app for Point of Sale. And about two years ago, I think Shopify announced at Unite, which is the Shopify partner version of Reunite, where they said, "We're investing significant time and resources into Point of Sale." And I'm really excited about this release. One thing I love about this new Shopify Point of Sale is it was completely rebuilt from the ground up, which is the best thing to do with an app when you're digging in and making sure that it is usable. And Point of Sale Pro is free through October, and coming soon, and love this especially right now, contactless checkout, where you can sit in your car and order coffee and then just scan your QR code.

Kelly (12:47): I think it's so cool.

Rhian (12:48): I'm so blown away by that.

Kelly (12:49): Another feature that they're adding to Point of Sale down the road is being able to see what's in store. As a customer, I can look on my phone and look at the store and see specifically what's actually in store for that location before jumping to go inside and realize, "Oh, I can't actually get what I want."

Rhian (13:07): That's going to be so impactful moving forward as well, when we start to measure how and when we move. This could not be more timely release. I know it was in the works for a long time before this. So it just so happens that this release is major. And we say the word commerce, right? We're called Commerce Tea not E-Commerce Tea because commerce is everywhere. Commerce is at our homes, commerce isn't a physical place, and this bridges the gap between them.

Kelly (13:35): Exactly. Absolutely. I think it's really important to really, really bridge that gap between online stores and the retail experience. I think the retail experience in general is going to be changing significantly.

Rhian (13:46): Yeah. Undoubtedly, right?

Kelly (13:49): Absolutely, yeah. I'll be interested in seeing how many people just go into a store to browse?

Rhian (13:54): Right.

Kelly (13:55): Because you're suddenly touching a lot of things other people have been touching, you're going to be around other people. Obviously, we're not always going to be in this state where we're in a pandemic, but there are going to be long lasting effects.

Rhian (14:08): Yeah, absolutely, and it's important to acknowledge that. And both Kelly and I are entrepreneurs, so obviously we've made changes to our business, but we've been advocating to our merchants and our clients to think about ways that they can change theirs in a sustainable, scalable fashion as well.

Kelly (14:24): For sure. So let's talk about a few more things that they're adding to the checkout experience. Some of these are already released and some of them will be coming soon. So first off, tipping at Shopify.

Rhian (14:35): Oh, so pumped. I'm so pumped.

Kelly (14:38): I think this is the coolest idea. So if you want to tip your delivery driver or you're selling, I don't know alcohol, you're a bar or a restaurant, I don't know why I jumped right to alcohol, we're supposed to be talking about tea.

Rhian (14:51): Kelly, it's the morning.

Kelly (14:55): We're off to a good start here. No, I think it's going to be really a really powerful tool for anyone who has any kind of-

Kelly (15:03): I mean, I think it's going to be a really powerful tool for anyone who has any kind of service based business. Let's say you're a salon; you can book your haircut, and tip your stylist through - at checkout. I love that.

Rhian (15:15): My current hairstylist who I obviously haven't seen for a long time right now, you have to tip in cash and it's always this thing I forget -

Kelly (15:24): Me too.

Rhian (15:24): And I get my hair done, and then I'm paying my bill and then I'm like, "Oh, I don't have any cash." And -

Kelly (15:29): I don't carry cash around anymore.

Rhian (15:30): I don't carry cash around. So tipping at checkout is so huge. And another use case for this is if there's a donation to the business, because so many of us right now want to help support our local businesses that may have taken, or probably did take a hit financially. We're like, "Hey, let's throw you an extra two or $5 because we want to see you survive all of this." And it's just a really great way to do that.

Kelly (15:55): Absolutely. So tipping is available now, and it's available on all plans. So you can go ahead and start using this.

Rhian (16:02): We have wanted this for, so... I'm so excited about this.

Kelly (16:06): For sure. So, one thing I did want to touch on, which is a very hot topic that merchants have been asking for, for a long time is native subscription support at checkout.

Rhian (16:17): Yes.

Kelly (16:21): It's not available yet. It is very much a work in progress. There are two things that are worth noting here. The first is integrating existing services into checkout. So we're talking recharge, or bold subscription. So instead of going through their own checkout, you'll be able to use Shopify's checkout natively for subscription products. That is one of the things they're working on. The other thing is native subscription support. So at the moment, they're really structured around, buy now, pay now or buy now authorize for 14 days and then accept the payments, manually, there's nothing in terms of installments. And maybe this is one of the things we're going to see as an evolution from offering installments at checkout?

Rhian (17:05): I agree with you. And I want to point something out to the listeners right now. When we use the word, "Native to Shopify" or the term, "Native to Shopify", because that's a little, a little bit of tech lingo. What we mean is, it exists in Shopify organically on its own. Shopify has put it there; it lives inside of Shopify, whether that's in the admin or publicly facing, but either way you don't have to you use another app. It just already exists.

Kelly (17:33): Exactly. And that's one of the most popular requests I think from store owners is, "Why do I need an app for everything?" So Shopify is definitely building a lot of these services directly into the Shopify admin, but also they're releasing additional apps. Which leads me to a really interesting topic, actually two of them, which is curbside pickup and local delivery.

Rhian (18:00): Yes. I know. I keep saying I'm excited about it, but it's because I genuinely am excited about all of these things and the more y'all listen, the more, you'll realize I'm a fairly excitable person, but the ability to route a delivery, which is coming soon is going to be game changing. That is coming soon, right? That's not live now?

Kelly (18:24): That is coming soon, yes. So curbside pickup is available now, where you can set pickup instructions for each of your retail instructions. So curbside pickup or pick up in store, whatever it happens to be; this is now a feature available on all plans. For local delivery, basically what they're doing, and again, this is coming soon, is they're giving you the ability to either set either a zip or postal codes that fall within the local delivery range, or by a radius from your store location. And customers can choose local delivery at checkout, if they're within that area. And what Shopify is doing is they're building this app that they're calling Shopify Local Delivery, I think, and it optimizes all of the orders that were placed within that radius, or within those zip codes, to give the store owner the easiest path to deliver all of those orders. And I think that is the coolest thing.

Rhian (19:20): It's so awesome. I have a friend in Los Angeles who's a floral designer and she's had to pivot her business really quickly. And one thing she called me asking about last week was, " Rhian, how do I optimize my time for delivery? Right now, making this crazy spreadsheet, and I don't really know what I'm doing". And I said, "I don't know, I don't have a good solution for you". And the second it was announced at [inaudible 00:19:40], I was texting her saying, "Hey girl, it is coming your way".

Kelly (19:45): I got you.

Rhian (19:46): Yeah.

Kelly (19:46): I love it.

Rhian (19:47): It was awesome.

Kelly (19:48): So another thing we can talk about is multicurrency in local domains. So there are some SEO implications to this and so Rhian, I would love for you to discuss how local domains work, how they announced it, and maybe one thing to keep in mind?

Rhian (20:06): So I'm excited about local domains, because it's been something that has been wanted for a long time. I do have some concerns in terms of SEO implications, because typically what we were doing, and have been doing for a long time is using totally separate domains that are not translated, that are not currency translated, that are unique. And the reason why is because you have to optimize them regionally for maximum search results and for maximum conversion.

Kelly (20:38): Yeah. So to go a little bit deeper here. Right now, the current state is if you want to on a local domain, so like mycoolstore.com for US merchants or for US customers and mycoolstore.ca for Canadian customers, I have to set up two separate Shopify stores, two completely separate instances in order to sell, to market to these two unique customers. The goal of local domains is to allow you to expand to these difference localized areas under the same store. Because if you're using separate stores, you have to sync your inventory between the additional stores, and it becomes a lot more work to manage multiple stores with the same content.

Rhian (21:30): And that's a huge value add.

Kelly (21:32): Exactly. So the goal is to speed up the process to allow you to sell across borders much more easily. One thing that's also coming soon is custom pricing for multicurrency merchants. So if you are a Shopify store owner who is using multi-currency through Shop Pay, you have a little toggle on your website that lets customers in the UK is shop through with British pounds or customers in Germany shop through euros. And it automatically converts the pricing. One of the most -

Rhian (22:07): I wonder if that's dynamic? Sorry.

Kelly (22:10): It dynamic.

Rhian (22:11): Is it dynamic [crosstalk 00:22:12] [inaudible 00:22:12] conversion as a [inaudible 00:22:13] whenever their purchase is done.

Kelly (22:15): Yeah. And customers can check out in their own currency. That's was what multicurrency does. So it's dynamic based on exchange rate. Which leads to a lot of issues with average marketing your products, for example. So what might be $ 18 and 54 cents is, I'm doing terrible examples here.

Rhian (22:36): Not a whole number.

Kelly (22:38): No. My goal was you're selling it like it's 19 USD, but in euros it's less. It'd be like 18.50. I don't know what the exchange it is right now. I obviously haven't traveled, well since February. So the problem is the numbers are always going to be changing. So it's not going to be a fixed number. So if you want to sell something in 30 for $36 in USD and 30 Canadian dollars, you can't do that right now unless you have separate stores. So the goal for custom pricing is allow you to set specific rules to convert the pricing into the local currencies. I still don't know if this is going to let you flat out set a unique price for another product in a different currency. There are a lot of unknowns here still.

Rhian (23:25): Right. And this is coming soon, right?

Kelly (23:28): Yes. It's going to be available later this year to all merchants who are using Shopify payments.

Rhian (23:34): I want to make a quick note on what, "Coming soon" means for all of the merchants out there who don't watch tech releases like Kelly and I do. "Coming soon" can mean next week, it can mean in a month, it can mean in six months, it can mean in a year. And the fact of the matter; is you don't want Shopify making a feature live that doesn't work how it should work. So sometimes it takes a little bit more patience than the patience that we have, but just as a heads up, when you're sitting at home, you're like, "Well, what does that? I don't know what that means" because that's a valid way to feel, and we also feel the same way.

Kelly (24:12): We have a running joke that things that are announced at Shopify Reunite again, which is the big partner conference, they're going to be re-announced at next year [inaudible 00:24:21] as actually being available.

Rhian (24:22): Yeah. I mean, I've got features for my app that have been coming soon for six months, because I need to make sure they're perfect before they launch. So that's how it is.

Kelly (24:31): It's how it is. And that's fine. So let's shift into the online store experience. There are a lot of updates that came out here. So let's start with a new theme that was released; a free theme called Express.

Rhian (24:44): So if there's a live announcement, my team takes it back and starts building right away. And one of my team members was able to build on the new Express team in under 10 minutes. Granted, he's a professional, this is what he does all of the time. This is not what you should expect from yourself, but what you can expect for yourself is to maybe do this under two, three hours. And it looks beautiful. It's lightning fast. It's so awesome, especially for service professionals, if you're in the restaurant industry, or if you're in the perishable goods industry. If you're in the perishable goods industry like food flowers, if you're a farmer, there's so many use cases here, and it's so easy to use and the theme is free.

Kelly (25:31): Completely free.

Rhian (25:32): Totally free.

Kelly (25:32): And it is available to use. Now it's super cool, the homepage sections that are available to you, the whole point is that it's a landing page. It's like a one page website to let you quickly get the contents up, get up and running, and let your customers begin to purchase your products. So we're not adding a bunch of frills to this, because the goal is to sell.

Rhian (25:54): Yeah, this is not a bells and whistles situation. This is a: get it done, get it live, let's sell.

Kelly (26:02): Exactly. So that actually leads me into another really interesting topic. And as a developer, I'm really excited about this one. Shopify will eventually be launching a new online store design experience. So, you know from editing your Shopify theme that you have a bunch of different sections on the page, and you can drag and drop them into whatever order you want, but you can't do that on any other page on your site. Shopify is rebuilding the entire customizer experience from the ground up, allowing for these sections to exist anywhere on your site. Whether you're editing a product page, you're editing an article, you're editing an informational page; you'll be able to make all these customizations.

Rhian (26:44): What does it look like from a merchant's perspective? Someone who doesn't code, but is going to be at home designing?

Kelly (26:51): Yeah. So it's going to give you a lot more tools at your fingertips without having to know how to code what's really cool is, you're going to be able to set master templates for each of your pages. So all product pages receive these specific sections. Let's say, you want to add product reviews to your product page. You'll be able to add a specific app that you're using, let's say, [inaudible 00:27:13] for example, [inaudible 00:27:16] will have a section that's automatically built into your theme, where you can just drag it into place. You save that as the master template for products. Now let's say I'm selling a really cool plant, and I need to know how to care for this plant, but I only need that information on that specific product. You can now create sections on that one specific product page to give more information on how to care for this product and not have to worry about custom coding that section in.

Kelly (27:51): It's really going to provide you with so many new opportunities to add additional content to your product page, which you are going to hear me say over, and over, and over again, that your product page, it's so important to include really key information. Basically if somebody were to land on your product page, they should know who you are, what you're selling, what your unique selling proposition is and why they should buy from you. All of that in one page, and all they did was land on your product page.

Rhian (28:19): Absolutely. I like to think of it as if mimicking an in store experience. As if someone was to show you in a t-shirt for instance and say, "Here's this t-shirt, it feels like this, it's made from this type of cotton, and here's the logo, and it's on the front, and you turn it around. And this is how you wear it, and I'd wear it with these jeans." And when you do that, people convert. Plus it's easier to get found on Google when you do all of these things.

Kelly (28:43): Absolutely.

Rhian (28:43): When you have a really robust product page full of information, that's when you drive traffic to your store, and most traffic gets driven to your product page, not to your homepage, or to your individual product pages.

Kelly (28:56): Exactly. So you're going to have so many new tools at your fingertips. A couple other really useful things is you'll be able to have a draft theme. So if you want to test what things look like with live data, you'll be able to do so before publishing that theme and making it your live theme on your store.

Kelly (29:16): Second, they're separating out the content that exists within the theme to live completely separate from the theme itself. So if you've ever duplicated a theme or installed a new theme, and suddenly you need to add all that content back in manually, which takes a long time -

Rhian (29:34): It really does.

Kelly (29:35): This is going to speed up the process tremendously for you. If you duplicate a theme to make some changes to it, but you make some theme, content changes, like you change out a hero image, for example, on the live theme and then publish the other theme, that data is not currently carried over. You still have to re-add all that information. So I'm really excited about this new online store design experience. There's not currently a launch or -

Kelly (30:03): ... Variants. There's not currently a launch or a release date for this. It is actively being worked on. It is already in beta. So I am able to go in as a Shopify partner and play with it, and I can see how they're building it out. They're doing a phenomenal job, really taking care of every single step of the way to make sure this is a good experience for you. So this is well worth the wait.pur

Rhian (30:23): I really feel like this is going to be a game changer for merchants.

Kelly (30:29): Absolutely. I cannot wait to see what people do with this. It's the key to creativity on your store. It honestly is.

Rhian (30:37): Yeah. And I think we're going to do a whole episode down the road about once this releases about how to make the most out of this tool because it's going to be epic.

Kelly (30:46): Absolutely. So now let's talk about the improvements that Shopify made to creating new products.

Rhian (30:53): Yes.

Kelly (30:53): So there are two things that they introduced. The first is faster product creation. Do you want to talk about this?

Rhian (30:59): I do. And I struggled to wrap my mind around this during the release. And full disclosure, Kelly and I watched the release over Zoom, and we're talking during it, and then of course missing some things, so then we had to go back and listen again, but you're able to take a picture on your phone and then move to desktop and finish writing about the product, right?

Kelly (31:27): Yeah.

Rhian (31:27): That's so awesome. Because so many of us don't have a full camera rig with all this fancy equipment. This lowers the barrier of entry to so many people, and it's going to be very impactful.

Kelly (31:44): One of my absolute favorite features for this faster product creation is when you take the pictures of your product on your phone through this faster product creation set up, it will maintain the same aspect ratio for all of your images. What this means is every single image will be the same size on your website, which it really, really improves the buying experience.

Rhian (32:06): Yeah. You want your images to all be the same and be uniform on your product pages.

Kelly (32:13): Exactly, so I'm very excited about this one. I'm also really excited about product states. So products in Shopify will soon have a draft state, so you'll be able to finalize and preview, collaborate with making changes and not have to worry about publishing them too soon. At the moment it is unpublished, in published, that is all you have.

Rhian (32:37): Right.

Kelly (32:38): The second feature they're adding, which I'm super curious about is they're going to have a way for you to archive products so you can manage your catalog a lot more easily. What I'm wondering, so one of the biggest no no's for SEO is that when you sell out of a product, you think that you unpublish the product and delete it.

Rhian (32:58): Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that.

Kelly (33:00): So what I'm hoping is by archiving a product, it cleans up your view, but you can still keep the product on the site and have new messaging saying, "This product is no longer available, but check out this one instead again." Again, really useful for the online store design experience.

Rhian (33:19): That is what I'm hoping it looks like as well because I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to merchants who have had a wildly popular product because maybe it got featured on Buzzfeed and that was their hero product. That was their big shebang, but then they sold out, and then they pulled the product. And I'm always like, "Don't pull the product off of your store. Absolutely don't do that. It stresses me out. It's also bad for SEO. Redirect it or put other products on that 404 page or just do something that isn't that." But this is going to change. So I'm excited to see this in action because if it works how I think it's going to work, it's going to really help SEO.

Kelly (34:00): Absolutely.

Rhian (34:00): And help you get found.

Kelly (34:02): I'm excited for it. I don't know when either of them are going to be actually released, just later this year is all the information we have. But hey, that's a really good sign if it's going to be coming later this year, that means they're making good progress on it.

Rhian (34:14): Yeah, I think so. I think so. So Kelly, I know there were a lot of announcements around omni-channel shopping, so Facebook shops, Shop the app. Can you talk a little bit more about those announcements?

Kelly (34:27): Yeah. So Shopify loves channels. They love adding new channels to provide you with additional areas where you can sell your products. So first off, Google Shopping you can now use Shopify's Google Shopping app to sync your products in Shopify so they can appear in relevant Google Shopping search results for free.

Rhian (34:47): For free. And I got to throw some credit to Google as well. Google isn't notorious for giving you free things, and Google released free shopping. What, is that about a month ago now?

Kelly (34:59): Yeah, I think it was in this past month. It was during the month of May.

Rhian (35:04): Yeah.

Kelly (35:04): It's just been announcement after announcement all month.

Rhian (35:07): It's been wild.

Kelly (35:08): It's a blur.

Rhian (35:09): Like the day before Reunite, Zuck and Toby, they had a bit of a chat.

Kelly (35:17): Yeah, they did. So one note about Google Shopping before we move on.

Rhian (35:20): Sorry, sorry, sorry. I got ahead of myself.

Kelly (35:22): You're good. It's available in the US right now, later this year, it'll be rolled out to additional countries. Now, Zuck and Toby, Facebook and Shopify, Facebook announced Facebook Shops, which basically means that Shopify merchants are going to have a brand new shopping experience on Facebook that lets you create a branded store that lives inside Facebook and Instagram. It's super cool. I think I'm really excited to see how they go about doing this.

Kelly (35:56): So there are, I think, four primary apps under the Facebook umbrella, so you have Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. If you start shopping on Instagram, you'll be able to finish shopping on Facebook, for example. It is a complete branded experience, all seamless across all four of the apps, which is super, super cool. It's also completely free. I don't know when this is actually being released. It's another coming soon.

Rhian (36:28): Yeah, it's another coming soon. But I think the implications on Instagram are going to be the most profound.

Kelly (36:35): Absolutely.

Rhian (36:36): That's my hypothesis, at least.

Kelly (36:37): Yeah. I think there are two areas that have been really lacking in terms of Instagram, and actually Facebook as well. So first the being able to easily buy a product from an Instagram photo. There are currently some ways to do it. It is not the best implementation. Second, lives are super popular now. So that means-

Rhian (36:57): Super, everyone's going live.

Kelly (37:00): Yeah. It's a live video where you're promoting your products, and basically customers will be able to, let's say swipe up, and purchase that product immediately. Really popular for boutiques, for any apparel businesses. I would love to see a cooking show on Instagram Live, like Chrissy Teigen, for example, has her own line of cooking products, and having her do-

Rhian (37:26): Cravings by Chrissy.

Kelly (37:27): Yeah, exactly.

Rhian (37:28): Love it.

Kelly (37:28): So it would be super cool to see her do like an Instagram Live using her own cooking products where you can swipe up and buy what she's using.

Rhian (37:35): I'm just trying to give her bananas for banana bread. I don't know if that's too much to ask, but Chrissy, if you're listening, I'd like to give you bananas in exchange for one of your awesome, awesome recipes that you've already made. I don't want to make it. I need you to make it.

Kelly (37:50): Oh, of course, of course.

Rhian (37:51): Yeah. I'm incompetent at best.

Kelly (37:53): So there's one more channel that we should talk about, and that's around Shop. Shop the shopping app powered by Shopify.

Rhian (38:02): I love this app.

Kelly (38:03): I think it's super cool.

Rhian (38:03): I didn't think I was going to, if we're being honest. When it was like, "Everyone, we're announcing this thing," I'm like, "Okay, come on. What's it possibly going to be?" And then it released, and I thought, "Oh, this is awesome."

Kelly (38:18): It's okay.

Rhian (38:18): Yeah. I am excited about it.

Kelly (38:22): I think we need to discuss what it actually is though.

Rhian (38:24): Yes.

Kelly (38:26): So Shop is rebranded from Arrive, which allowed you to track your shipments across any platform. I think there was this common misconception that the Shop app was going to become a marketplace where you can discover new brands. That is not the purpose of it. It is to increase lifetime value of your existing customers.

Rhian (38:51): And to clarify, this is an iOS and Android app.

Kelly (38:55): Yes, it's available on iOS and Android. So basically if you're using Shopify Pay or Shop Pay... I'm going to screw that up so many times if you're using Shop Pay, you can have your store show up on this Shop app, and customers will be able to purchase your products right there directly.

Kelly (39:18): Now, what they're adding is a Shop channel, which is going to let you customize how your brand shows up on the Shop app, so you can better tell your story and your relationship with your customers instead of just the template, "Here is our brand logo and our name," and that's it.

Rhian (39:34): Right.

Kelly (39:35): So it's really important to keep your brand voice consistent across all platforms, and by introducing the Shop channel, you're going to be able to do that.

Rhian (39:43): One thing I really like about the Shop channel too is I was able to discover local brands by me selling on Shopify that I didn't even know existed. And I was blown away by that. Further, the other thing I really like about Shop is the carbon offsetting function, which is-

Kelly (40:01): Oh, yeah, I though it was so cool.

Rhian (40:02): It's so cool. And it's basically where... I actually don't know how it works. They plant a tree?

Kelly (40:10): No, so they don't plant trees. They protect existing trees.

Rhian (40:14): Okay, okay.

Kelly (40:15): Which I thought was really cool. I think it's different from what you would normally expect instead of planting trees, but the idea is there's a carbon offsetting for your purchases. And for all your purchases that you make through the Shop app using Shop Pay, you can keep track of how many trees you're saving, and they kind of gamified it a little bit, I think, to let you compare with your friends how many trees you've saved compared to everybody else. And there's an overall account of like, "There have been 2.6 million trees saved already."

Rhian (40:46): And of note, you have to buy through the Shop app to save the trees.

Kelly (40:51): Yes.

Rhian (40:51): Yes.

Kelly (40:52): It has to be through the app, which is why I've saved zero trees.

Rhian (40:55): Yeah, I just found this out, I think it was yesterday, and I was like, "Oh, I've been doing it wrong this whole time."

Kelly (41:02): Exactly.

Rhian (41:03): I was wondering, I was like, "Oh, one tree, that's it? I'm doing a bad job." And then that's because I wasn't using it properly.

Kelly (41:10): I mean, you helped even if you have one tree.

Rhian (41:12): Well, hey, that's good.

Kelly (41:15): So let's talk about two additional services that Shopify recently released, and they're also improving upon. So the first is Shopify Email, and I actually have a client who is actively using this, which is super cool.

Rhian (41:28): I haven't met anyone who's using it yet, but I know a lot of... How many emails have been sent? Is it 30 million?

Kelly (41:33): It's a large number. Yeah, I know that was really vague, a large number has been sent.

Rhian (41:38): Yeah, I think it was 30 million off the top of my head.

Kelly (41:41): Yeah. So basically Shopify Email introduces the ability to send marketing emails to your customers so they can subscribe at checkout. They can subscribe, maybe your footer, you have an email sign up form. You can use Shopify Email to send marketing emails directly to your customers. They're continuing to build out the functionality here. So you'll be able to segment your audience, eventually you'll be able to send automated emails. So create those welcome series flows because welcome series is a series and not a single email. Same with your abandoned cart strategy, we're going to do a whole episode on that eventually.

Rhian (42:16): Yes.

Kelly (42:18): Shopify Email is free for everybody to use until October, 2020.

Rhian (42:21): Great.

Kelly (42:22): So give it a try if you're not currently sending emails.

Rhian (42:26): Yes.

Kelly (42:26): I think I need to make this one important note, Shopify Email is not meant to replace the big ESPs or email service providers such as Klaviyo or Omnisend. You're going to have a much more robust experience using one of the other services out there. I think Shopify Email is really great for small businesses. I think it's great for businesses that are working with a smaller budget, a smaller marketing budget, just so you can get something sent out to your customers.

Rhian (42:53): Now let's talk about Shopify Ping.

Kelly (42:56): Yes.

Rhian (42:56): I've been a paying fan since it was announced. And it comes from the same team as Kit, which I'm also a big fan of, and it's a free messaging app that helps businesses really create personal connection in real time with real life customers.

Kelly (43:18): I have a slightly different opinion of Ping, and that's because currently it's only available for iPhones. It's only on iOS. I just switched to an iPhone like four weeks ago. I think it was like a pandemic crisis purchase.

Rhian (43:35): I was surprised when she did it. It was all of a sudden our texts were blue, and I said, "What is happening?"

Kelly (43:40): I had that happen so many times. I'm just like, "I had to change. It just happened." But okay, so Shopify Ping is coming to Android and the web this summer, so it's finally going to be released across multiple platforms. Which is really great because when it's only available in iOS, you're missing out on a lot of conversations, a lot of potential conversations with your customers.

Kelly (44:01): Another cool feature that's being added is staff accounts. So each of your team members will be able to communicate with customers individually instead of under one shared identity.

Rhian (44:10): And we've been talking a lot about "conversational commerce" in our world for a long time. And this is a term for selling as if a person was right in front of you. Again, this touches back to how do you make commerce transition seamlessly from an in-store experience to an out-of-store experience? And this is really going to empower merchants to do as such.

Kelly (44:36): Absolutely. And in future episodes, we'll be talking about SMS marketing and especially how it differs from email marketing because they are definitely not the same. They're not the same approach at all.

Rhian (44:47): It's a totally different game.

Kelly (44:49): So Shopify Ping is available for iOS now. It has been available for iOS now. It will be available this summer for Android and on the web, which I learned via Twitter actually.

Rhian (45:01): Twitter is a great resource.

Kelly (45:03): I love Twitter.

Kelly (45:03): ... via Twitter, actually,

Rhian (45:03): Twitter is a great resource.

Kelly (45:03): I love Twitter.

Rhian (45:06): Another announcement that got me pretty excited, and it's because I get excited about education and I love to learn, and part of being an entrepreneur is constantly learning and that new product is Shopify Compass, which are free online courses from experts in the industry. You can log on right now to Shopify Compass and there's already courses, and there's more courses being made every single day by leading commerce experts. It's going to be a great resource to get you off the ground as a new merchant, but also to keep you going as you advance to different stages of your business.

Kelly (45:45): Absolutely. It's cool because there are recorded workshops, but there are also live workshops that you'll be able to join in, they're every Thursday at 1:00 PM. And these things cover a variety of topics. So it can be you're brand new to starting your business, what does it even mean to run an online store? And then it gets super detailed into how do I optimize my Facebook ads or how do I do email marketing? What is SEO? There are a lot of topics that are going to be covered on this completely for free. So we're going to link to this in our show notes, but you can go to shopifycompass.com now to take a look at all the concepts on there.

Rhian (46:24): Really exciting stuff.

Kelly (46:26): For sure. We have two more areas to discuss. So let's talk about orders first because there were quite a few updates on the order fulfillment returns section.

Rhian (46:37): There are, and that's something that, I mean, that's one of our apps, well not any of these things, but we deal with orders on a day to day basis. Right now our app alone is processing and tracking 28 million orders. Right?

Kelly (46:53): It's so many.

Rhian (46:53): It's so many. So if you just extrapolate that out to scale of Shopify, there are so many orders being done and being tracked and being held on a day to day basis. There's a new order page, and I think it's great. Do you want to talk about it a little bit more?

Kelly (47:12): Yeah. So right now the current state of the order page is a very high level overview of, "This is the person who placed the order, and this is how much the order is for, and this is whether or not it's fulfilled." That's basically it. I mean, there's some other bits and pieces in there. So they've rebuilt the orders page from the ground up to give you all the relevant information you need at a glance. So order items, delivery methods, customer details, order notes, all of it is going to be from this one page. I think it's going to make it ... Right now because you have to like click into each individual order to see all this information, it's going to make your workflow a lot more efficient.

Rhian (47:51): Absolutely. Speaking of workflow, there's going to be a new returns workflow. This has been a pain point for merchants for quite a long time.

Kelly (48:02): Absolutely. I honestly don't exactly know how this is going to be represented. So at the moment, you have to use an app to have a returns process on your website, right? So customers right now cannot start the returns process. I don't know if this is going to be on the admin side for returning things, or if it's going to be introducing a feature that's going to let customers begin that returns process. I honestly don't know. All I know is that they are introducing a new returns workflow that's going to be combining a lot of these tools that you currently have to use under one system within Shopify.

Rhian (48:39): Another thing we absolutely have to talk about is the Shopify Fulfillment Network update.

Kelly (48:44): Absolutely.

Rhian (48:45): Oh, it's great. In the last year, Shopify acquired 6 River Systems, based out of Boston, and they have been just innovating over there and they even made a robot named Chuck who's helping to automate the ... I love it. It's like how many? Right? Like boxes can the Chuck chuck chuck. So there's a model of Chuck the robot. But the goal ultimately is to provide today shipping to all merchants globally. This takes an Amazon head on.

Kelly (49:21): Exactly. It's huge for merchants. So it's been in beta for a while and they're now opening it up to all businesses that ship between 10 and 10,000 orders a day to the United States. So merchants within the United States who are shipping, you can apply for access and we will provide a link to the show notes on where you find that.

Rhian (49:41): I'd really highly recommend this right now, if you're finding yourself, just always stressed about your fulfillment process-

Kelly (49:50): And fulfillment is one of the most difficult parts honestly, of running a business, like the packing, the shipping, the returns, everything. Being able to say, "Here are my products, do this for me-"

Rhian (50:01): This is how I want it done.

Kelly (50:02): Exactly.

Rhian (50:03): And Shopify Fulfillment Network's like, "Yes." It's not like going to be an Amazon situation where they just shove it in a bag and go, right? It's a, "I want it packed and shipped this way."

Kelly (50:13): Exactly. They're working with a fulfillment partners all over the US and eventually over the globe to handle all the fulfillment. So it'll be geographically located to where your businesses and where your customers are. Super cool. The idea of expanding today shipping to all merchants on Shopify is huge. Huge, huge huge.

Rhian (50:35): Yeah, this is another game changer, for sure.

Kelly (50:37): I am really excited about the Shopify Fulfillment Network.

Rhian (50:41): Now another announcement in relationship to orders is purchase orders and that's so you can track order and receive inventory from your suppliers directly into Shopify. So how does the purchase order work, right? If I'm in brand new merchant and don't know what that means?

Kelly (51:00): Okay. Purchase orders. I am no expert. So I'm going to wing this. But a purchase order is a document that's sent from you, the buyer, to a supplier where you can request products or services as an order. So a purchase order is going to include the number for tracking the purchase order throughout the system, the type of item, the quantity, the agreed upon price. So all of this information is going to be directly available within Shopify, which I think is really cool. My team is currently building an app that is going to allow you to show a note on your product page that says this item is on back order, and we're going to be tying into this purchase order system. So it is automatically pulling the dates because you'll know when these orders are going to be arriving or where these products are going to be restocked.

Rhian (51:49): And you know what I think is so cool about this? This really puts all your ops, and so many of these releases, they put all of your operation management under one roof, right? Shopify Balance, cool. I can bank from my living room. Purchase, I can do that all in one location. I don't have to go from QuickBooks to my bank website to this. It's just like all in one place, serving you what you need to succeed as a small business.

Kelly (52:18): Exactly. The whole point is to streamline your operations. You shouldn't have to go in to system A and system B and system C all the way to system Q, because that's what happens. The more you grow, you start introducing so many different systems to handle things and to be able to put a lot of these things under one roof is going to make your life so much easier.

Rhian (52:38): So, so much easier. Okay. So Kelly, I want to talk about a release I know you're excited about, and that is the performance dashboard.

Kelly (52:46): Yes!

Rhian (52:46): So what is it first?

Kelly (52:49): There are two things to discuss here. The first are the performance improvements that have already been made to the backend. So Shopify has been working on rebuilding the online store engine, so what powers your store, to help with your load times, to make your website or make your store a whole lot faster. I think that's been one of the complaints that the more apps you install on your store, the more the store slows down, check out can be slow, whatever it might be. So in doing this rebuilding, they've seen some stores load up to twice as fast when powered by this engine.

Kelly (53:26): So they're starting with rolling this out to Shopify Plus merchants, so the enterprise level of Shopify. But by the end of the year, it'll be available to all merchants. So I'm really excited about this because performance is a key indicator for your conversion rate. If you have poor performance, you're going to have a lower conversion rate.

Rhian (53:44): Also from an SEO perspective, if you are performing poorly, you are less likely to get indexed and recrawled. Also, people bounce off of your page if they have to stay for longer than three seconds, they're like, "This must be broken. I'm going somewhere else." So that's really crucial. From my perspective, I'm excited about the performance dashboard because we as app developers have been working on optimizing our apps for speed for months now. So we finally are going to get to see the fruits of our labor, but I'm really excited.

Rhian (54:15): I do have a sticking point, I will admit, I am worried that some of the verbiage might be a tattoo technical for the majority of folks. So I'm going to assume there's going to be a lot of documentation to help support that and to walk folks through it because anytime we start getting into analytics and really deep data, you run the risk of just ... I mean, how many people are data nerds like me who sit there and read white papers? The answer is not many.

Kelly (54:43): Note many.

Rhian (54:43): Like, I think it's cool. Most people aren't like, "Numbers are soothing to my brain," you know? So, okay.

Kelly (54:50): Yeah. So the performance dashboard. The goal of this, and JML, the CTO of Shopify, summarized this very succinctly by saying, "The goal of the performance dashboard is to give you, the merchant, the ability to see how fast is my store, how fast is my store compared to other businesses in the same space. So looking at benchmarks here, and how fast is my store-"

Rhian (55:15): I like that peer to peer comparison.

Kelly (55:16): Oh, totally. It's super important, and, "How fast is my store now, compared to how fast it was a month ago?" So it's giving you the tools to understand this information and then gives you a deeper look into which apps are potentially causing your store to slow down, which I'm really excited to see this because-

Rhian (55:36): I am too.

Kelly (55:39): As I mentioned, one of the biggest speed killers on your website is installing too many apps. Sometimes apps will install code on your site, on your theme, and you uninstall the app and that theme code stays in there. It just becomes a mess over time that slows down, you're loading a lot of scripts. This performance dashboard is really going to let you hone in on what is causing your store to slow down.

Rhian (56:05): One point of note that we should take too, is that when you are uninstalling apps, you should always email the app developer to make sure that they're not leaving any leftover code.

Kelly (56:16): Absolutely.

Rhian (56:17): So that way, six months down the road, you're not playing cleanup and then trying to remove all of the apps you've installed throughout your time to try them out. So that's a good rule of thumb. App developers, mostly, will get back to you within 24 hours. So if you're still in that trial period, and you're thinking, "You know what, this app isn't for me." At day five or day six, email and say, "Hey, I'm going to install. Make sure that there's no remnants before uninstall," because when you do uninstall, then the app developer no longer has access to go back into your store and to remove the code.

Kelly (56:49): Exactly. So we are going to be doing a whole series of episodes on performance and installing apps. So I'm excited to dig into that further. So the performance dashboard, a few merchants are going to have early access to this feature in June, and it'll be available to everyone later this year.

Rhian (57:06): Really excited about that.

Kelly (57:07): We made it through all of the announcements.

Rhian (57:10): We did it.

Kelly (57:11): It was a lot, and I really hope that you're still listening because we covered a lot.

Rhian (57:17): We just sped read Reunite with commentary.

Kelly (57:22): With commentary. Exactly. So I hope you're as excited as we are at these new features coming out. I'm really interested in seeing how business owners really take advantage of these new features.

Rhian (57:33): Yeah, reach out to us. Let us know what you're thinking and what you're seeing and how you feel about this. You can tweet at us @CommerceTea.

Kelly (57:42): You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us on our website. You'll be able to comment on the episode and you can also email us at hello@commercetea.com. We're available on the internet.

Rhian (57:53): We are on the internet almost all of the time. That being said, if there's a topic that you want to hear us cover, please feel free to reach out to us.

Kelly (58:02): Yeah. This podcast is for you. So we want to know what you want to hear. So we're going to close out each episode by shouting out a Shopify store that we maybe recently purchased from, or we think it has a really great user experience. So Rhian, what is yours?

Rhian (58:21): Mine is Ugly Drinks because A, it's super cute, B, it's super fast, and C, the drinks are delicious.

Kelly (58:32): Are they ... Mine get delivered today and I'm super excited.

Rhian (58:36): I think I'm just closer to the fulfillment center than you are. Okay, what about you? What's your favorite store right now?

Kelly (58:44): So my favorite store right now is called Micro Puzzles.

Rhian (58:46): Oh, Micro Puzzles.

Kelly (58:48): So I talked to the founders of the company about a month ago, two months ago, time is a blur. I have no idea how time works anymore, and I love puzzles. These puzzles are three by five inches. They're super tiny, cute little pieces. You can either buy one of the ones that already had a pattern that they've created, or you can even create your own. Like they have an example of creating a save the date out of a puzzle, and I think that's super fun.

Rhian (59:17): That's a great idea.

Kelly (59:18): Yes. So uglydrinks.com, micropuzzles.com. We'll link to those in the show notes as well. We made it!

Rhian (59:26): We did it!

Kelly (59:27): Thank you so much for tuning into our first episode. You can subscribe to Commerce Tea on your favorite podcasting service. We post new episodes every Tuesday. So grab your mug and join us and we'll see you next week.